¶1Show me an admin who has never been called a nazi and
I’ll show you an admin who is not doing their job. — J.S.’s Second Law

¶2Wikipedia is not merely an online multilingual
encyclopedia; although the Web site is useful, popular, and permits nearly
anyone to contribute, the site is only the most visible artifact of an active
community. Unlike previous reference works that stand on library shelves
distanced from the institutions, people, and discussions from which they arose,
Wikipedia is both a community and an encyclopedia. And the encyclopedia, at any
moment in time, is simply a snapshot of the community’s continuing
conversation. This conversation is frequently exasperating, often humorous, and
occasionally profound. Most importantly, it sometimes reveals what I call a
good faith collaborative culture. Wikipedia is a realization — even
if flawed — of the historic pursuit of a universal encyclopedia: a
technology-inspired vision seeking to wed increased access to information with
greater human accord. Elements of this good faith culture can be seen in the
following conversation about a possible “neo-Nazi attack” upon the
English-language Wikipedia.

¶5 This
cordiality would be commented upon in a related incident later in 2005, in
August, when Wikipedia user Amelkite, the owner/operator of the white
supremacist Vanguard-News-Network, had his Wikipedia account blocked.
MattCrypto, a Wikipedia administrator, then unblocked him, thinking it unfair
to block someone because of his or her affiliation rather than Wikipedia actions.
This prompted another administrator, SlimVirgin, to reblock, pointing out
Amelkite had posted a list of prominent Wikipedians thought to be Jews as well
as information on how to counter Wikipedia controls of disruption. The
conversation between Wikipedia administrators remained civil:

¶6 MattCrypto: Hi SlimVirgin, I don’t like getting into
conflict, particularly with things like block wars and protect wars, so I’m
unhappy about this….

¶7
SlimVirgin: I take your point, Matt, but I feel you ought to have discussed
this with the blocking admin, rather than undoing the block….

¶9When I speak of Wikipedia I am referring to a wiki
project, which includes both the textual artifact and the community producing
it. (This is a common usage, as is referring to Web sites without a definite
article, that is “I searched Google and Wikipedia” not “I searched the
Google and the Wikipedia.”) Furthermore, there is a particular vision of
access and openness at Wikipedia, as seen in its slogan describing itself as
the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This vision, the encyclopedia, and
its community and culture are introduced in the sections that follow.

¶10The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization
under which Wikipedia and its related projects operate, asks the reader to
“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.”7Wikimedia Foundation, “Vision,”
Wikimedia, September 1, 2007, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision
(visited on June 5, 2008). However, this commitment is not
unique to the new millennium. Indeed, Wikipedia’s heritage can be traced back
to the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, it can be traced back
to Paul Otlet’s Universal Repertory and H. G. Wells’s proposal for a
World Brain (included in a 1937 book of the same title). These
projects were conceived as furthering increased access to information;
facilitated by the (then relatively novel) technologies of the index card,
loose-leaf binder, and microfilm. However, this vision exceeds the production
of information. Wells proposed that reference work compilers would be joined by
world scholars and international technocrats to produce a resource that every
student might easily access, in a personal, inexpensive, and portable format.
Furthermore, this collection of the world’s intellect was envisioned to yield
a greater sense of unity: Wells hoped that such an encyclopedia could solve the
“jig-saw puzzle” of global problems by bringing all the “mental wealth of
our world into something like a common understanding”; this would be more
than an educational resource, it would be an institution of global
mediation.8H.G. Wells,
“The Idea of a World Encyclopedia,” Nature 138 (November 28, 1936):
920-921. Wikipedia shares this concern for “the sum of all
knowledge” with early visionaries. And while no one argues that Wikipedia
will bring about world peace, I do argue goodwill is necessary to its
production and an occasional consequence of participation.

¶11
However, while most early Wikipedians were probably unaware of these
predecessors from a century ago there was a more immediate inspiration: Free
and Open Source Software (FOSS). One of the earliest news articles about
Nupedia, Wikipedia’s non-wiki progenitor, notes: “The philosophy of the
open-source movement is spreading within the industry. Now, a maker of a
Web-based encyclopedia wants to apply its principles to share knowledge in
general.”9Liane
Gouthro, “Building the World’s Biggest Encyclopedia,” PC World
(March 10, 2000),
http://www.pcworld.com/article/15676/building_the_worlds_biggest_encyclopedia.html
(visited on October 25, 2005). Nupedia described itself as
“the open content encyclopedia” and was available under the GNU Free
Documentation License. (GNU is a seminal free software project.) FOSS is
licensed to enable users to read and improve on the source of the software they
use. This has proven to be a much noted alternative to proprietary software in
which one’s usage can be restricted (e.g., unable to backup, install multiple
copies, repair, or improve). When I emailed Jimmy Wales to ask about the
influence of FOSS on his thinking, he replied:

¶14Wikipedia is the wiki-based successor to Nupedia and
its name is a portmanteau of “wiki,” an online collaborative editing tool,
and “encyclopedia,” itself a contraction of the Greek enkyklios
and paideia, referring to the “circle of learning” of the
classical liberal arts. This name is evidence of a geeky sort of linguistic
humor and also prompts the question of whether a relatively open-to-all wiki
can also be a high-quality reference work. In the following pages I return to
these points but for now let’s consider the wiki and encyclopedic aspects of
the thing we call Wikipedia.

¶15
Wikipedia is an online wiki-based encyclopedia. “Wiki wiki” means “super
fast” in the Hawaiian language, and Ward Cunningham chose the name for his
collaborative WikiWikiWeb software in 1995 to indicate the ease with which one
could edit pages. (He learned of the word during his first visit to Hawaii when
he was initially confused by the direction to take the “Wiki Wiki Bus,” the
Honolulu airport shuttle.11Ward Cunningham, “Correspondence on the Etymology of Wiki,”
November 2003, http://c2.com/doc/etymology.html (visited on October 4,
2008).) In a sense, the term wiki captures the
original conception of the World Wide Web as both a browsing and editing
medium; the latter capability was largely forgotten when the Web began its
precipitous growth and the most popular clients did not provide their users
with the ability to edit Web pages.

¶16 The
wiki changed this asymmetry by placing the editing functionality on the server.
Consequently, if a page can be read, it can be edited in any browser. With a
wiki, the user enters a simplified markup into a form on a Web page. Using the
Wikipedia syntax one simply types “# this provides a link to [[Ward
Cunningham]]” to add a numbered list item with a link to the “Ward
Cunningham” article. The server-side Wikipedia software translates this into
the appropriate HTML and hypertext links. To create a new page, one simply
creates a link to it, which remains red until someone actually adds content to
its target destination. These capabilities are central to and representative of
wikis.

¶22It can be even more difficult to get a sense of the
English Wikipedia community. The “Editing Frequency” page indicates that
41,393 registered (logged in) users made five or more edits in September 2008
(the most recent published figures).24Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Editing Frequency,” Wikipedia,
November 30, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=254994395 (visited on
December 1, 2008). Yet, this doesn’t represent the hundreds
of thousands of contributors who may have previously contributed, those who
edit “anonymously” or without a consistent identity, and the “Wiki
gnomes” who may fall short of this threshold — such as myself — but
continue to quietly enact small tasks (e.g., fixing a typo) as opportunity
presents itself and time permits.

¶25 I
characterize my approach to my subject as a historically informed ethnography:
observing — and occasionally participating in — the Wikipedia online
community. While I make use of a broader historical context and online
archives, I began to follow this community “in real time” in 2004 via a
number of venues. First, there are the actual Wikipedia pages and edits to
them; this includes the encyclopedic articles (e.g., “Chemistry”) as well
as the “meta” pages documenting the policies and norms of Wikipedia itself
(e.g., “Neutral Point of View”). Second, there is the talk/discussion page
associated with each article on which conversation about the article occurs
(e.g., suggestions for improvements). Third, there are mailing lists on which
more abstract or particularly difficult issues are often discussed; wikiEN-l
and wiki-l often include discussions of the administration and policies of
Wikipedia. Also, there are the Wikipedia Signpost and
Wikizine newsletters, other community forums such as the popular
“Village Pump,” and various Wikipedia-related blogs, aggregators, and
podcasts.31For
Wikizine, Signpost, and "Village Pump" see Walter, “The English Language
Edition of Wikizine”; Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost,”
Wikipedia Signpost, May 7, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=288444646
(visited on May 21, 2009); Wiki ... Fifth, and finally, there
are the physical spaces in which some community members interact. Through
Wikipedia “meetups” I’ve attended in New York and annual Wikimania
conferences I’ve met a couple dozen contributors. It’s quite easy to speak
to a new Wikipedian acquaintance about issues of concern to the community, and
many of these people I’ve spoken to more than once. These conversations were
informative, but casual. I formally interviewed only a handful of sources and
otherwise have relied on the public activity and discourse of the community.

¶26 In
sum, there are the tens of thousands of active contributors who are familiar
with the basic practices and norms of English Wikipedia. This includes smaller
communities on the scale of hundreds or dozens of members within geographical,
functional, and topical boundaries. And the English Wikipedia is part of a
larger community of multilingual encyclopedias and Wikimedia projects.

¶27The focus of this book is Wikipedia’s collaborative
culture. While I explain what I mean by this in chapter 3, I want to first
briefly introduce my approach and Wikipedia’s core collaborative principles.

¶28 In
addition to millions of encyclopedic articles, Wikipedia is suffused with a
coexisting web of practices, discussion, and policy pages, the latter of which
populate the Wikipedia “project namespace” and “Meta-Wiki” of Wikimedia
projects.32Wikipedia,
“Wikipedia:Project Namespace,” Wikipedia, November 30, 2007,
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=174790757 (visited on December 19, 2007);
Wikimedia, ... A charming example of wiki practice is the
awarding of a “barnstar,” an image placed on another’s user page to
recognize merit. “These awards are part of the Kindness Campaign and are
meant to promote civility and WikiLove. They are a form of warm fuzzy: they are
free to give and they bring joy to the recipient.”33Wikipedia,
“Wikipedia:Barnstars,” Wikipedia, August 11, 2009,
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=307406807 (visited on August 20,
2009). There are different stars for dozens of virtues,
including random acts of kindness, diligence, anti-vandalism, good humor,
resilience, brilliance, and teamwork. As in any other community, at Wikipedia
there is also a history of events, set of norms, constellation of values, and
common lingo. Also, not surprisingly, there is a particular sensibility,
including a love of knowledge and a geeky sense of humor. Unlike many other
communities, most all of this is captured online. Even beyond the inherent
textual verbosity of other online communities, Wikipedia is extraordinarily
self-reflective. Most everything is put on a wiki, versioned, linked to,
referenced, and discussed. And in the tradition of Godwin’s Law of Nazi
Analogies, an initial set of four observations by Wikipedian Raul654 in 2004
has become a collection of over two hundred laws by Wikipedians describing
their own interactions. This proliferation is itself the subject of Norbert’s
Law: “Once the number of laws in a list exceeds a critical mass (about six),
the probability of new laws being tortured, unfunny and bland rises rapidly to
unity.”34Wikipedia,
“User:Raul654/Raul’s Laws (oldid=301373968)”.
Furthermore, the “WikiSpeak” essay is an ironic glossary of terms that
gives insight into both Wikipedia’s substance and faults. For example,
collaboration is defined as “One editor taking credit for someone else’s
work.”35Wikipedia,
“User:Malleus Fatuorum/WikiSpeak,” Wikipedia, July 10, 2008,
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=224745874 (visited on July 10,
2008). (“Raul’s Laws of Wikipedia” and “WikiSpeak”
definitions also make appearances as chapter epigraphs in this book.)

¶29
This wealth of material is a treasure given my interest in understanding how
people make sense of their experiences of working together. And while I was
influenced by varied scholars in conceiving of and executing this work,
sociologist Harold Garfinkel’s “ethnomethodology” is particularly
relevant given its focus on “practical activities, practical circumstances,
and practical sociological reasoning”.36Harold Garfinkel, Studies in
Ethnomethodology (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 1. By
“practical sociological reasoning” Garfinkel means the discourse and
reasoning of the actual participants themselves. How a community makes sense of
its experience is what Garfinkel refers to as “accounting processes.” As
Alain Coulon writes in the introduction to Ethnomethodology, it is
“the study of the methods that members use in their daily lives that enable
them to live together and to govern their social relationships, whether
conflictual or harmonious”; that is, how “the actor undertakes to
understand his action as well as that of others.”37Alain Coulon, Ethnomethodology,
volume 36, Qualitative Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995),
29. The two hundred-plus laws posited by Wikipedians are a
salient example of the community trying to understand itself and its
circumstances.

¶30
Therefore, much of this book is an exploration of the norms guiding Wikipedia
collaboration and their related “accounting processes,” but there are three
core policies central to understanding Wikipedia and are worthwhile addressing
at the outset: “Neutral Point Of View” (NPOV), “No Original Research,”
and “Verifiability.” While NPOV at first seems like an impossible, or even
naïve, reach toward an objectively neutral knowledge, it is quite the
opposite. The NPOV policy instead recognizes the multitude of viewpoints and
provides an epistemic stance in which they all can be recognized as instances
of human knowledge — right or wrong. The NPOV policy seeks to achieve the
“fair” presentation of all sides of the dispute.38Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Neutral
Point of View,” Wikipedia, November 3, 2008,
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=249390830 (visited on November 3,
2008). Hence, the clear goal of providing an encyclopedia of
all human knowledge explicitly avoids many entanglements. Yet when
disagreements do occur they often involve alleged violations of NPOV.
Accusations of and discussions about bias are common within the community and
any “POV pushing” — as Wikipedians say — is seen as compromising the
quality of the articles and the ability for disparate people to work together.
However, violations of NPOV are not necessarily purposeful, but can result from
the ignorance of a new participant or the heat of an argument. In some
circumstances, the debate legitimately raises substantive questions about NPOV.
In any case, while some perceive NPOV as a source of conflict, it may act
instead as a conduit: reducing conflict and otherwise channeling arguments in
the productive context of developing an encyclopedia.

¶33 I consider all three of these to be different
aspects of the same thing, ultimately. And at the moment, when I think about
any examples of apparent tensions between the three, I think the right answer
is to follow all three of them or else just leave it out of Wikipedia. We
know, with some certainty, that all three of these will mean that Wikipedia
will have less content than otherwise, and in some cases will prevent the
addition of true statements. For example, a brilliant scientist conceives of
a new theory which happens to be true, but so far unpublished. We will not
cover it, we will not let this scientist publish it in Wikipedia. A loss, to
be sure. But a much much bigger gain on average, since we are not qualified
to evaluate such things, and we would otherwise be overwhelmed with abject
nonsense from POV pushing lunatics. There is no simple a priori answer to
every case, but good editorial judgment and the negotiation of reasonable
people committed to quality is the best that humans have figured out so far.
:) —Jimbo Wales 15:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)43Jimmy Wales, “Wikipedia
Talk:Neutral Point of View,” Wikipedia, August 15, 2006,
http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=69887768 (visited on November 14,
2007).

¶35A hazard in thinking about new phenomena — such as
the Web, wiki, or Wikipedia — is to aggrandize novelty at the expense of the
past. To minimize this inclination I remind myself of the proverb “the more
things change, the more they stay the same.” Therefore, I begin in chapter 2
with an argument that Wikipedia is an heir to a twentieth-century vision of
universal access and goodwill; an idea advocated by H. G. Wells and Paul Otlet
almost a century ago. This vision is inspired by technological innovation —
microfilm and index cards then, digital networks today — and driven by the
encyclopedic impulse to capture and index everything known. In some ways my
argument is an extension of that made by historian Boyd Rayward who notes
similarities between Paul Otlet’s information “Repertory” and Project
Xanadu, an early hypertext system.48W. Boyd Rayward, “Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944)
and Hypertext”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 45
(1994): 235–250, ... My effort entails not only showing
similarities in the aspirations and technical features of these older visions
and Wikipedia, but also recovering and placing a number of Wikipedia’s
predecessors (e.g., Project Gutenberg, Interpedia, Nupedia) within this
history.

¶36 In
chapter 3, I turn to an essential feature linking Wikipedia to the pursuit of
the universal encyclopedia and to Wikipedia’s success: its good faith
collaborative culture. While the relevance of “prosocial” norms has
been noted by other scholars (along with notions of trust, empathy, and
reciprocity), Wikipedia provides an excellent opportunity, because of its
reflective documentation and discourse, to see how such norms emerge and how
they are enacted and understood. I focus on the norms of “Neutral Point of
View” and “Assume Good Faith” to argue that an open perspective on both
knowledgeclaims and other contributors,
respectively, makes for extraordinary collaborative potential. However, unlike
the incompletely realized potential of earlier visions, Wikipedia is very real
and very messy. How the community wrestles with issues of openness, decision
making, and leadership can offer insight into collaborative cultures.

¶37 A
facet of the universal encyclopedic vision has been an increase in the
accessibility of knowledge. Wikipedia takes this further, by increasing access
to information and its production. In chapter 4 I present the Wikipedia
community as an open content community. This notion is inspired by
FOSS and the subsequent popularization of “openness,” but focuses on
community rather than copyright licenses. I then consider four cases that
challenge Wikipedia’s openness as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can
edit.” In the first case I ask: is Wikipedia really something anyone can
edit? That is, when Wikipedia implemented new technical features to help limit
vandalization of the site, did it make Wikipedia more or less open? In the
second case I describe the way in which a maturing open content community’s
requirement to interact with the sometimes “closed” world of law affects
its openness. In this case, I review Wikipedia’s “office action” in which
agents of Wikipedia act privately so as to mitigate potential legal problems,
though this is contrary to the community values of deliberation and
transparency. Third, I briefly review concerns of how bureaucratization within
Wikipedia itself might threaten openness. Finally, I explore a case in which a
closed (female-only) group is set up outside of, and perhaps because of, the
“openness” of the larger Wikipedia community.

¶38
Beyond the more abstract question of openness, the fact that the community has
a porous boundary and a continuous churn of pseudonymous and anonymous users
means there are significant challenges in working together and making
decisions. H. G. Wells thought his “World Encyclopedia” should be more than
an information repository; it should also be a “clearinghouse of
misunderstandings.”49Wells,
“The Idea of a World Encyclopedia,” 921. By reviewing a
specific “misunderstanding” about the naming of television show articles, I
explore the benefits, challenges, and meaning of consensus at Wikipedia.
Specifically, by contextualizing Wikipedia practice relative to other
communities (e.g., Quakers and Internet standards organizations) I show how
consensus is understood and practiced despite difficulties arising from the
relative lack of resources other consensus communities have from the start.

¶39 And
just as the complexities inherent in the understanding and practice of good
faith, openness, and consensus reveal the character of Wikipedia and prompt
insights into human interaction, the question of leadership in this type of
community is also revealing. In open content communities, like Wikipedia, there
often is a seemingly paradoxical use of the title “benevolent dictator” for
leaders. In chapter 6, I explore discourse around the use of this moniker so as
to address how leadership works in open content communities and why Wikipedia
collaboration looks the way it does today. To do this, I make use of the notion
of “authorial” leadership: leaders must parlay merit resulting from
authoring something significant into a form of authority that can also be used
in an autocratic fashion, to arbitrate between those of good faith or defend
against those of bad faith, with a soft touch and humor when — and only when
— necessary.

¶41 I
conclude with a reflection upon H. G. Wells’s complaint of the puzzle of
wasted knowledge and global discord. Seventy years later, Wikipedia’s logo is
that of a not yet complete global jigsaw puzzle. This coincidence is
representative of a shared dream across the decades. The metaphor of the puzzle
is useful in understanding Wikipedia collaboration: NPOV ensures that we can
join the scattered pieces of what we think we know and good faith facilitates
the actual practice of fitting them together.